Remembering the lost giants

Reflecting on shifting baseline syndrome and the fact that redwoods aren’t the tallest trees on Earth: they’re the tallest which haven’t been logged.

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The Czech and French author and political dissident Milan Kundera once wrote that “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Although he wrote about the authoritarianism of the Soviet Union, Kundera’s insight could equally be applied to any totalitarian state, or to the industrial system that is tearing through the ecology of our planet. For any genocide, ecocide, or atrocity to be complete, it must be buried.

This is why the Turkish Government to this day perceives discussion of their genocide of the Armenian people to be a threat to national security. It’s why the full details and reverberations of the shameful legacy of slavery and the holocaust of indigenous people are not taught in American schools. It’s why Israeli society must deny the existence and significance of the Nakba and pretend that their holy land was “Terra Nullius” reclaimed in a War of Independence sanctioned by god. And it’s why the ongoing devastation of planet Earth by industrial civilization isn’t suitable for polite conversation, let alone detailed study. Societies built on a foundation of unspeakable acts do not wish to be reminded of these facts.

This is closely linked to what is called, in ecology, “shifting baseline syndrome.” It refers to the fact that ecological change which is happening exceptionally quickly according to the clock of nature, still takes place over decades or centuries. As a result, human beings can lose sight of what is ecologically normal. This syndrome makes it dangerously easy for us to lose track of rate and scope of the ecological collapse we are living in.

Memory is important. Remembering atrocities means we are forced to grapple with their implications in our society and our lives today, and compelled to take moral action to right historical wrongs. This is a difficult process not just because it challenges individual privilege, but because it means challenging the most entrenched, dominant, and violent systems of power on the planet.

All of this brings us to trees. It’s a familiar fact to many people that the Redwoods of Northern California are the tallest trees in the world at nearly 400 feet.

This is both true and false. It’s true because right now the redwoods are the tallest trees on Earth. But it’s false because not long ago, there were taller trees to be found, but they were all cut down during the heyday of old-growth logging in the Pacific Northwest.

The tallest known redwood, named Hyperion, was measured at 380.8 feet tall in 2019. But historical accounts are full of references to Douglas Fir trees 400 feet tall and more. One tree in the lower North Fork of the Nooksack River Valley (near present day Bellingham, WA) is thought to have been 465 feet tall, which would make it the largest tree ever recorded. That’s nearly the height of a 50-story building, and for comparison, the Empire State Building has 102 floors.

That tree wasn’t an anomoly. Big-tree researcher Micah Ewers of Portland writes, “If this was just a freak occurrence, I would write it off. But I’ve collected 90-100 reports of 300- to 400-foot Douglas firs. A hundred years ago, trees rivaling the height of the redwoods were fairly common. The whole Puget Sound was just filled with giant trees.”

[T]he size of forest that was growing in Seattle [historically] was astounding; 250 – 300 foot trees were common. I am trying to follow up on an old report of a 412 footer said to have been logged around Tacoma, and another big tree 17.8 feet in diameter east of Seattle was reported in 1909 at over 400 feet — the tree was so big that the Puget Sound railroad had to be built around it.

Another fir tree reported in Chehalis County in 1893 was measured with survey instruments at over 400 feet tall and 17 feet in diameter. There were even reports of 300 foot cedars and 400 foot Sitka Spruce 20 feet in diameter in Washington and Oregon 100 years ago.

If you look up “Ravenna Park” in image search you can find old post cards which give the size of some of the trees that used to grow in Seattle’s most treasured city Park. Those fantastic trees were listed on the post cards as from 270 to about 400 feet in height and 10 to 14 feet in diameter. Age estimates were between 1,000 and 2,000 years for the oldest of them. Just imagine these massive old beasts jutting out of the little creek and valley near the University District.

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